“I think the softer rose,” Sonia finally said. “It’ll look more like her natural tone on camera for the main part of filming. For the close-ups, I want her skin as bare as possible so we get to see her natural responses, but the subtle eye you’ve done on the right side would work perfectly. The more dramatic eye on the left side for everything else,” the director said decisively, patting Franny on the shoulder. “Good work, Francesca. It’s perfect.”
With Sonia’s seal of approval given, the director left the room, and Franny beamed with pleasure. She came back to Katrina and began working on her face again.
“Let’s even you out so you don’t look like a work-in-progress for the rest of the day,” she said, already wielding her brushes with renewed vigor.
Katrina watched in wonder as Franny made the right side match the left and evened out the foundation tones on her cheeks. It was very light makeup, and Katrina really liked the effect Franny had achieved with so little effort.
“Is this about how you normally do your face?” Franny asked at one point.
“I use a heavier foundation, but I like what you’re using better,” Katrina admitted. “When I’m working, I need stuff that will last the entire shift without running down my face, if you know what I mean. I usually use waterproof mascara and a swipe of dark powder eyeshadow, instead of liner from about mid-eyelid to the corners, and a tiny bit underneath my lower lashes.”
Franny nodded. “That’s a good look for you. You have a really nice shape to your eyes, and, of course, they’re big. I’d say, they’re your best feature, though the rest of your face is good, as well. Nice straight nose. Not too big or too small. Same for the lips, though many in Hollywood these days would tell you to get collagen injections to plump them up. Not me, though. Especially not for this picture. Everyone on this film needs to look like a normal human being. Not a plastic-enhanced version of humanity.”
Katrina laughed. “I’m sorry, but most of the cast is, like, the best version of human being there is. Tall, fit, handsome. There’s nothing average about most of the cast.”
Franny tilted her head to one side, as if considering her answer. “Okay,” she said finally. “I’ll give you that. They are a good-looking bunch, but if you look at them closely, none of them are plastic in any way. That’s just natural, good genetics at work.”
Katrina nodded, agreeing. “I suppose, but I still feel like the ugly duckling among the swans.”
Franny huffed and moved out of the way so Katrina could see herself in the mirror. “I ask you—does that look like an ugly duckling? No way, no how. You’re the swanniest swan of them all.”
They shared a chuckle, and Katrina thanked Franny for the ego boost and the terrific makeup job, then asked about the products she had used. That took the conversation off in another direction, and Katrina learned a lot about products she would buy for herself, once this gig was over. No more heavy foundation for her. Not when this stuff looked and felt so much better.
Franny’s next victim arrived, and Katrina vacated the makeup chair to go back to her room and study the script for a half-hour before the next item on her agenda. She consulted her master planner and the small daily to do list she’d made to carry around in her script and got on with her day.
The rest of the cast and crew rode over to the location in chartered passenger vans, but Ren liked to get himself from place to place on his motorcycle, especially when the weather was nice. He arrived at the old church they were using for some of the shots a bit early and scouted the perimeter a bit before everyone else started arriving. The old structure was made of quarried stone and built to last. It was a much smaller version of some of the gothic cathedrals he’d visited in his travels around the world and had stopped being used as a church decades ago. The owners had allowed the forest to grow up around the building as the surrounding town moved its center away from the old church, away from the river that had a tendency to overrun its banks a bit too often.
Nothing really harmed the old stone building, so it remained, even after the floods had driven away the rest of the people who had once lived around it. The property owner had bought up the surrounding land, and though someone had once tried to live on the site, the continual flooding that inundated the place every few years had eventually driven them to higher ground, as well. Now, the site was used for special events. Weddings, parties, film shoots, and the like. People could rent the place out for a few hours or a few months, depending on their needs.
The set design and props people had been all over the interior already, setting up the areas they would be using with the proper tapestries and furnishings. The stone walls and leaded-glass windows would look amazing and be indistinguishable from similar stone walls and windows in much more expensive locations.
Ren scouted the outside, walking from the parking area where he left his bike, down to the river and then back around the perimeter, skirting the trees. There was a large open green space where the men would be working on fight choreography, and the craft services people were already set up under the roof of a very large open-air picnic space off to one side of the clearing.
He was coming back around to the front of the building, though the small garden area, when the first of the passenger vans pulled up. He hung back, leaning against the wall of the building, somewhat hidden by the angle of the cut stone and the nearby bushes. It was in his nature to be cautious, and he wanted to see who was in the first load of passengers.
Most of the other actors had been in the first load, including most of the Merry Men and, last off the small bus, Maid Marian. Katrina. He imagined he could almost breathe in her delicate scent from even this distance.
She was laughing as she stepped off the bus, enjoying a joke with Dennis, who was playing Friar Tuck in this production. Dennis was an older fellow, and by that, Ren knew ol’ Den had already lived the better part of two centuries. He was a very old-fashioned cat who didn’t even have to try to exude charm. It certainly looked like he’d charmed the lone human in the group as he stood by to help her should she somehow need assistance getting out of the van.
Ren would have been jealous if he didn’t know for a fact that Dennis’s mate was waiting for him in the picnic area. His better half was running the craft services department for this gig, and they had been happily mated for longer than Ren had been alive. Hell, they had children older than Ren, himself.
The little human woman couldn’t be in safer hands, yet something inside made Ren want to go to her side and usher her through her first day on a real movie set. He knew her history. He knew she was new to all this. He’d taken the time to look up her prior acting credits, scant as they were, and he’d even sourced images from her school productions all the way back to tenth grade.
She’d been a cute kid who’d grown into a gorgeous woman. Her talent had been strong as a youngster, but like many gifted kids, she’d become disillusioned by the reality of beating the streets, looking for work as a young actor. He didn’t blame her. He remembered how it had been, himself, before he’d struck gold by chance.
Ren had been cast in a television series that he hadn’t taken too seriously, expecting the ridiculously over-the-top storyline to get cancelled mid-way into its first season. Shockingly, it hadn’t. Something about the show had caught on, and they’d done five seasons before the whole thing began to unravel.